


brooklyn, brooklyn (take me in)

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:37:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you're a ghost, but the ghost is this city. | A slice of time in Bucky's search for who he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brooklyn, brooklyn (take me in)

**Author's Note:**

> based on a Tumblr prompt--redone and reposted!

They say you’re a ghost, but the ghost is this city.  
  
Its boroughs, its blocks, every corner that you turn—just shadow and light. Faded imprints, memories that feel hollow without color to fill their empty lines.  
  
The rooftops and the fire escapes, the trees and the sidewalks all resonate inside you, like echoes in a vacant room. These are the things that were buried in the earth before salting the ground, the only proof that you weren’t made on a table in a bunker in the aftermath of war, that you were someone rather than some thing, once. That you had a past, and a family and a body meant to live and die a natural death.

Now, each step you take is another remnant uncovered of a time you acknowledge, but can’t yet contextualize.  
  
You see, but you don’t _understand_.

When you reach out to touch the brick wall of a back alley, you feel a chill: the spirit of some elusive yesterday passing through you, begging you to put flesh and blood to the bones of its apparition.

They say you’re a ghost, but the ghost is this city.

 

 

 

  
Over the river, a bridge looms. The sight of its wires and cables calls out to you, the way a sailor might be called to the sea.

Brooklyn, someone says.  
  
One of two names you know better than your own.

 

 

 

When your feet find purchase on the streets where the history books tell you that you lived a life long before it was lost, you notice first the things that have gone missing: the drugstore at the corner, and its sign, the one that you still dream about, the one that hung at an angle but always felt like an arrow pointing home; the block of flats where you hung your pants out to dry in the sticky New York heat; the movie house with candy bars that melted in your mouth and were well worth every nickel you could spare; and, your own self. The destination you still don’t know how to map.

There are cartographers who help people navigate across the world but there is no compass that will lead you back to places that no longer exist. You want to find the spark that will light up the nest of your mind, that burrows into all the blank spaces and kindles the person you used to be.  
  
You want to find something that stayed.  
  
There’s an apartment that overlooks the Manhattan skyline. You ring the buzzer. Ask, “Steve?”   
  
Then you wait downstairs for a man who could be flint to your steel.

 

 

  
  
Coney Island first, Steve decides.  
  
There is a ride in a crowded subway where nothing feels the same until you disembark and the smell of fried food throws you bodily into a memoryof another ride—the sorrow and apprehension of fifty cents leaving your pocket, contrasted with the wild joy on Steve’s face right before he puked into a trash bin.  
  
You can still feel the whip of your belly and the hammer of your pulse in your ears—

Can still feel Steve’s hand on your arm, a death grip because he was too skinny to be tucked comfortably in his seat—

You rode into the clouds, and it was the first time you really felt like you and Steve could leave, find somewhere and go fly off into the unknown, embark on a new adventure. And as you swooped down, clutching Steve’s fist where it twisted in your sleeve, you imagined chasing a future far away from lung fever and bread lines, and the crushing weight of an impending war. You remember the rise and the dip, and how for ages after, Steve drew the two of you as birds in tandem flight, untethered by anything but each other.

Years later, you’re looking up at the Cyclone again and thinking how it’s true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Only this time, as the carriage crawls up the tracks and crests the hill, you curl your fingers around Steve’s wrist, and hope for roots rather than wings.

 

 

 

 

There’s a diner where Steve orders you a Coca-Cola in a glass bottle, and it bubbles like laughter at the back of your throat.  
  
You don’t know how many years it’s been since you laughed but the lines at the corner of your eyes are still deep enough to know that once, you laughed often and easily. Steve smiles like it’s been years for him, too, like he’s been waiting for a reason to set loose the grin that is lighting up the corners of his face, luminous in a way that makes you squint and think of whispered jokes in the middle of a muddy tent and a messy war, the little slivers of joy that can sneak in even when there are ruins strewn all around you.  
  
“How long has it been since you had a soda pop, Steve?” you ask and the softness in his gaze tells you he knows what you’re really saying.  
  
 _Too long, Buck_ , is what he doesn’t respond,  _Been decades since there was anything to laugh about like this._  
  
Out loud, he says, “Living richer these days,” his eyes watching you closely as you tip your head back and smile just because you know how.  
  
“Let’s order another,” he suggests, “and stay awhile.”

 

 

 

  
The north meadow of Central Park comes next, where Steve looks at you expectantly until you look down at the scar that bisects the third knuckle on your right hand.  
  
“We used to play ball,” Steve says, and you’re not quite used to the sound of his voice, wistful and warm in turns. “Till one of the guys socked me in the jaw for calling him a cheater.”

Blood, the smear of red and adrenaline racing when looking down at a small form lying crumpled on the grass—

“I socked him right back,” you say, because it feels like an irrefutable fact.  
  
Steve looks amused. “Yeah,” he says. “You always did.”  
  
There are monuments to Steve’s bravery all over the country, but before any statue or plaque, your fists did the commemorating; left goons littered across the city with broken noses and tender bruises.  
  
“Picked fights you couldn’t win?” you guess, arching a brow.  
  
And his voice is wry when he responds, “I got a bad habit of doing that, sure.”

You didn’t understand, before, how no amount of wiping or reprogramming could erase the imperative that sleeps inside you still, to keep Steve from harm and finish any battle he starts. To be his shield and, when he has a shield, to be his gun.

Now, you know that imperative was actually instinct, borne and bred in the earliest days of your friendship, honed in the schoolyard, and alleyways, and parks like this.  
  
“I stood up for you.  _With_  you.”  
  
It’s not the question that it might’ve been, a few weeks ago.  
  
Steve lays a steady hand on the back of your neck.  
  
“Yeah,” he says again. “You always did.”

 

 

 

  
You walk past a barbershop in Williamsburg, ears pricked to the soft  _shnick_  of hair falling to the floor.  
  
Steve touches your elbow, asks if you want to go in, and you run a hand through your hair, which hangs in your face, uncut and unkempt.  
  
There was pomade, then. The pleasant scratch of a comb as it worked your hair into a meticulous part, the edge of a razor skimming the hair at your nape, the glint of scissors cutting a style high and tight around the ears and neck.

Your mother cut your hair, sometimes. In the hazy morning light on winter days when everyone was asleep and the snow muffled the city sounds. Her hands were birdlike on your jaw as they cradled your face up and to the side and her eyes were always so soft.  
  
Steve is not the only one who has ever loved and lost you.  
  
You realize suddenly that you never got to grieve for the people you left behind, the ghosts within the ghost that this city has become. And you wonder if, in some ways, you have kept yourself preserved like a fly in amber—the Winter Soldier in form if not in frame of mind—because it would prevent the pain of becoming James Buchanan Barnes once more.

When he first found you, Steve said: “You can’t go back. All you can do is your best, and sometimes the best you can do is start over.”  
  
You tilt your head, and take his words to heart.  
  
“A haircut sounds good,” you say, and begin the process of beginning again.

 

 

 

  
Fairgrounds and a blue sky follow after, and you know this place, remember a flash of crowded bodies and a brightly-lit stage.  
  
"This is where we saw Howard Stark try to make cars fly,” Steve says.  
  
There’s something in the way his hair gleams that makes you think of nerves buzzing under the skin and fear disguised with easy affection.

 _Don’t do anything stupid till I get back—_  
  
Steve beams when you try out the word “punk,” and relief is a tangible thing in his eyes.

_til i get back_   
_til i get back_   
_til i get back—_

Sometimes you forget that you’re not the only one who’s been waiting for your return.

  
  
  
  
In the evening, you pass a fruit stand selling piles of apples. The smell is the same as it ever was, a deep breath of sweet and sharp. Apple pie was a special treat when your family had occasion to celebrate, and Steve’s voice is happy as he asks if you’d like to help him make dessert.  
  
Rolling your eyes is an instinctive reaction but Steve doesn’t look very wounded. As well he shoudn't; there's certainty that limns the suspicion in your soul that Steve has rarely cooked anything even passable.  
  
"Always were my biggest critic," he says good-naturedly, and even though it’s just a joke, you feel dissonance echo through you, because history and memory have conspired to tell you that actually, you've always been Steve’s biggest fan.

The way he nudges your foot tells you that he knows.  
  
And later, when you bake a pie with the apples browned just the way your Ma taught you how, he digs into his slice with a look of such contentment and peace that you are almost embarrassed to be privy to his honest emotion.  
  
"Tastes like—before," he says.

You wouldn’t have known what he meant if he’d said it just a day or two ago. But you understand a little better now what Steve sees when he closes his eyes, and the determination with which he’s planted himself here. You see how a place can become a foundation just as easily as a person can become a touchstone.

So maybe there’s no going back to the past, but maybe—maybe there’s a way to bring the past into the present. Step into the future not with ghosts, but with something and someone to ground you in who you were, and who you are going to be.

 

 

 

(Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.)

 


End file.
